(For another poignant and charming book about love and grief, read Goodbye for Now.) RATING Quirky, clever, unusual, poignant and big-hearted but light on its feet, Unlikely Animals is a novel with an unlikely mix of ingredients that had me smiling, chuckling, and cheering for the Starlings and, indeed, the whole community of Everton. Next, add the layer of the real-life-naturalist Baynes, who plays a fairly big role in Clive’s last months, and it’s a lot more interesting.
Add in the book being narrated at times by the ghosts of the town cemetery, who are cheering on the living, and it gets a little extra interesting. Yet another layer explores the opioid crisis and its horrible toll on individuals, families and communities. Another layer of the story is about a family coming to terms with the illness of one of the parents, in this case a type of dementia, and impending death. Those stories tend to lead to their heroines finding new meaning and a path for themselves. Unlikely Animals is on one layer a common-enough story about a young adult who’s trying to find her way in life and has to go back to her small town to deal with family matters. But Clive is working hard every day to find her, putting up missing-persons posters and asking around everywhere for clues. Everyone, including the town’s two police officers, knows Crystal did drugs, and it’s likely she’s dead.
On top of all that, Emma learns her best friend from high school has been missing for months, and her father is the only one trying to find her. He’s clean for the moment, but these things aren’t guarantees. She is still angry at her father for his affair, and she has to deal with her younger brother again, who recently had a second stint in rehab for drug abuse. Clive has some kind of brain disease, which is causing tremors, confusion and hallucinations-he’s seeing animals indoors, as well as the ghost of long-dead naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes, who once lived in Everton and was a real-life Doctor Doolittle.Įmma isn’t thrilled to be home, not at all, but she has nowhere else to be. But Emma dropped out of med school before it even got going, and months later, her mother has convinced her to come back home to be with her father. She left her small town of Everton, New Hampshire, for the real big things: college in California and medical school. People watched her for years, waiting for big things from her, but she only could hurry along minor healing, really. IN SHORT: This magical realism book has many charming layers to it.Įmma Starling was born with a healing touch, according to the midwife who said the infant she delivered cured her sciatica.
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